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Logsdon: newspapers should be boxed, not thrownFri, 03/13/2009 - 3:29pm
By: John Munford
Mayor thinks papers should pay for receptacles attached to mailboxes Peachtree City Mayor Harold Logsdon wants the city to consider requiring all newspapers to be delivered in special receptacles instead of being thrown in driveways. Logsdon, speaking at last week’s city council retreat, said he sometimes sees driveways in his neighborhood with three, four or five newspapers, magazines or other distributed items. “I don’t think its an unreasonable thing,” Logsdon said. City Attorney Ted Meeker said he would have to research the matter further, but he recalled one city that tried years ago to eliminate driveway distribution of all printed materials but it was overturned on freedom of speech grounds. If the newspapers land in city rights-of-way, however, it could be “actionable under our litter ordinance,” Meeker said. City Clerk Betsy Tyler noted that the city has been operating under the theory that due to freedom of speech requirements the city couldn’t tell companies not to throw publications in residents’ driveways. “But you can write to the newspaper owner and ask them not to throw and they have to comply,” Tyler said. Councilman Don Haddix said the best way to address the problem is to deal with residents who fail to remove publications from their driveway. Many mailboxes don’t have room underneath for a newspaper receptacle to be placed below the mailbox itself, Haddix noted. “We need to do something about people who don’t pick theirs up,” Haddix said. Acting Developmental Services Director David Rast said the U.S. Postal Service allows for newspaper receptacles to be mounted on existing mailboxes is certain requirements are met. Haddix noted that one resident in his neighborhood routinely leaves her papers at the end of her driveway, so his neighbors routinely stack them up. “We need something to deal with people like that,” Haddix said. Councilman Steve Boone questioned whether or not newspaper carriers would stop at each residence to put the paper in a receptacle. Logsdon replied that he has lived in four different towns, all of which required a newspaper receptacle to be used. During a break in the retreat, Logsdon told The Citizen that he envisioned newspapers paying for the receptacles instead of city residents. Logsdon suggested the matter be discussed by council perhaps at a workshop session in the future. In 1999, the Georgia Supreme Court struck down an ordinance in the city of Sylvania that forbid “any written instrument” to be delivered to homes. Noting freedom of speech liberties, the court’s opinion noted that Sylvania’s ordinance was “not narrowly tailored to serve the city’s desire to protect its aesthetic beauty and prevent litter.” The Sylvania ordinance allowed mail or hand delivery of papers, but the court deemed that to be “prohibitively expensive.” The Sylvania law also allowed papers to be placed on doorknobs or in mailbox hanging devices, but the court determined it would impose “unreasonable regulations on the place and manner of distribution in violation of the first amendment,” according to the opinion. The court’s opinion also noted that the city could require the publisher to retrieve papers that residents don’t pick up in a timely manner or even prosecute the publisher for papers found littering streets or drainage ditches. The court also held that residents who fail to pick up litter in their own yards could also be punished by the city. login to post comments
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